the glossy dark-green leaves, and with a low cry of delight stooped
down and kissed the clusters of fragrant berries as they lay fresh and
bright before her.

"O you dear, darling little things!" cried she, "how I love to see you
again, and know that all the rest of the pretty things are coming right
along!"

Then she began to pluck, and put them sometimes in her mouth, sometimes
in her pail, and so long did she linger over her pleasant task that the
sun was already in the tops of the pine-trees, when, returning from a
little excursion into the woods to get a sprig from a "shad-bush,"
Roxie halted just within the border of the little glade, and stood for
a moment transfixed with horror. Beside the pail she had left brim-full
of berries, sat a bear-cub, scooping out the treasure with his paw, and
greedily devouring it, apparently quite delighted that some one had
saved him the trouble of gathering his favorite berries for himself.

One moment of dumb terror, and then a feeling of anger and reckless
courage filled the heart of the woodsman's child, and, darting forward,
she made a snatch at her pail, at the same time dealing the young
robber a sharp blow over the face and eyes with the branch of shad-bush
in her hand, and exclaiming:

"You great, horrid thing! Every single berry is gone now, for I wont
eat them after you. So now!"

But, so far from being penitent or frightened, the bear took this
interference, and especially the blow, in very bad part, and after a
moment of blinking astonishment, he sat up on his haunches, growled a